I often set myself goals. It's how I progress, it's how I achieve things I want to achieve on top of the day to day running of a busy family life. And I'm talking about day to day goals and to do lists, as well as big life goals. I need a very defined goal in order to have a hope of achieving anything (e.g. 'sew 4 blocks of the Liberty print quilt', as opposed to 'work a bit more on a quilt'). However, sometimes I set myself really definite goals and still fail to achieve them. OK, so I'm not someone who gets downbeat at every little failure, and I'm well aware of the power of family life, complete with two small people, to utterly disrupt the best laid plans in the most silly ways, but it's always nice to achieve what we set out to, right?
It was only as I read a post by Kat the other day that I realised that although I do very well in my goal setting (it is often said, and I believe it to be true, that written down, time constrained and definite goals have a uch higher chance of being achieved than vague, amorphous ones), the reason I sometimes fail in achieving those goals is usually nothing to do with bad luck, chance or a busy life.
(click on the picture to go and read the full post. It's interesting).
It is, in fact, down to quite often utterly failing to take account of point 3 above, and then not noticing that because I have also failed to take account of point 5. Make a plan and review that plan occasionally. Simples.
You see, sometimes I set myself a goal like (to take the example above) 'finish four blocks of the Liberty print quilt' and convince myself that I will do it in the two hours or so I have available, when actually if I sat down and made a proper plan, I would quickly realise that it takes me perhaps an hour to complete a block, and I also have to hang out a lundry and put another one on in that same chunk of time. So, best case scenario, I might get two blocks done. A more realistic goal might be 'complete one Liberty print block and cut out the fabric for a second.' And I can apply the same logic to bigger goals like decorating my workroom, building my new business, or saving for a house deposit.
I know none of that is rocket science, but it was such a joy to read Kat's post and realise exactly where I was going wrong in my goal setting.
Not that I think for one minute, of course, that even the best laid plans won't still occasionally be thrown by the small people.
